


Keys

by ChocoChipBiscuit



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/F, Music, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 12:25:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6153673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/pseuds/ChocoChipBiscuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Piper's fascinated by Blue's hands. Musician's hands. Eyes are windows to the soul, but hands are the keys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keys

Blue curls a hand over Piper’s belly, fingers denting skin. Pressing into her like handprints in snow. Piper’s body cupped to hers, knees and hips and elbows aligned, neat rows and angles like metal strings. Breath and limbs together, hard press of teeth against Piper’s neck-- Blue bites, works her fingers over Piper’s clit as Piper whines high and sharp. All her words jumbled inarticulate, letters disarrayed. Music in an unfamiliar key.

After, Piper kisses Blue’s thumb, fingers. Dry press of lips to each worn pad. Slips her tongue between, tastes the grace notes of orgasm. Travels the cleft, palm, blade of Blue’s hand-- dark and sour now, ink-dragged from Blue’s crabbed left-handed scrawl. Flavor and nuance, rich and complex. Textured layers built upon one another like chords, like silt, like sediment ground into the night.

* * *

 

Ghosts and memory, a mournful dampening that depresses her shoulders. Compresses her lungs, brings her in small and fragile. Bones of her wrist jutting like bird’s wings, veins swimming blue and strange beneath translucent flesh.

Blue sits on the creaking wooden bench, sets fingers to keys gone yellow with age. Old bones and ivory, black keys chipped. Thumbs set at center, fingers spanned. Left pinky extended ever-slightly outward, a too-straight line compared to the crooked comfort of the right. Familiar as a heartbeat, life’s first song.

First note. Sour, aching. Off-key and sweeter for the loss.

Blue laughs, bitter-rich like old coffee. Sets her hands again.

Scales, simple. Up and down, octaves spanning wings as the fingering grows smooth. Muscle-memory reclaiming its own, writing itself down the paths of habit. Hands more confident even though the piano’s tune never aligns.

Piper hovers by her shoulder, caught in the eerie spell of the jangled notes. Rattles down her spine, taps each rib in a xylophone-shudder as the scales shift, alter. Simple practice, but not dry. Never dry. Blue plays with all the careful warmth and flourish of a practiced performer, shifts to an unfamiliar constellation of notes, intricate and classic.

When her fingers slip-- inevitable, unavoidable, how many weeks and months out of practice, not even including the centuries on ice-- she continues. Never stops, never falters. Jaw set, eyes narrowed. Swallowing down something Piper’s never seen.

Crescendo. Stop.

Leaves Piper hanging. Heart salt-ragged and wine-dark, dripping down her throat. Incomplete and aching.

_ I forget the rest of the song _ , Blue says. Eyes shuttered closed, soul locked off. Turns her hands over. Short-cut nails and dark seams, tangled life-lines and troubles mapped across the palm.

Eyes are windows to the soul, but hands are the keys. Drifting, mournful.

* * *

 

Blue twists the bobby pin, slither-twinkle of motion and tilts her hand. Gentle release of breath as the lock pops open. Eyes lit with triumph, rises from her flat-footed squat. Victory on her lips.

_ No key, no problem _ , she says, but it’s tumblers clicking behind her eyes, hammers and strings and a performer’s half-bow, arm extended.

Piper steps close, kisses her soft. Tongue’s a key, stiff and heavy. Too much, too little. The words fail and she turns, opens the door. Blue’s hand cupped over hers, thumb pressing comfort on the back of her knuckles. Swinging door reveals dusty shelves, overstock and supplies. 

Blue has a talent beyond scavving, downright transformative; sees the potential in coils of wire and electronics, breaks things down to stanzas, bars, notes. Rearranges, composes, brings new life to the old and familiar.

This time, even Piper sees the treasure in the dust.

And while Blue has stripped parts and pieces from the unlikeliest of places, Piper already knows this one will remain intact. How much less and how much more valued this is than the sum of its parts, plastic and copper and circuitry packed thin in an abbreviated keyboard that Blue tilts from its box. Hands steady-- always steady, always strong, even as her mouth trembles and the ocean swells beneath her lashes-- as Blue sets it up.

No strings, no hammers.

Only the promise of music on dead slats, Blue’s fingers pressing frustration over slick keys.

* * *

 

Blue brings the electronic keyboard back to the Red Rocket station, strapped over her shoulder. No heavier than the years she carries.

Lines of windmills break the sky, silent blades spinning power. Blue enters her workshop, unpacks the keyboard. Plugs in, connects. Backless bench in front, takes a seat. Fingers poised, hands fanned with staccato juts of knuckle.

Every touch a memory, echoes forward. Back. Ripples through time, stitches past and present into harmony. Blossoms into scales, bright majors keying to mournful minors and back again. Subtlety in every note, invitation like a reawakened friendship.

Oils up the hinges of her heart, volume low. Practices into the night with twining rhythms, digital notes suspended on the breeze.

Beautiful, but empty. Lacks the resonance of that off-key true piano.

Still sets her fingers dancing, strength and muscle and flexibility returning. Pins and tumblers clicking into remembered patterns.

* * *

 

Piper massages Blue’s hands after long sessions, presses her thumbs into the meat of the palm and polishes the joints with tiny circles of her finger. Dabs the knuckles with dots of precious lotion, works the skin supple and draws firm lines through the corded muscle of Blue’s forearm.

Blue talks, sometimes. Rare and precious with her words, silence as integral as sound. Brings sheet music from Sanctuary, rustles pages and flips until she lands on whatever piece catches her fancy. Composers with names that crumble off Piper’s tongue like dry biscuit. Beethoven. Chopin. Tchaikovsky. Rachmaninoff. Debussy.

So many numbers. So-and-so’s Fifth. Opus 23, or ‘Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor.’ Numbers slur and bleed into one another, no matter how sprightly Blue’s fingers, how crisp her notes.  Smooth articulation between phrases, silver as a summer storm. Trickles music through her bones, bleeds it through her fingers.

Piper asks when she gets to hear Blue’s First.

Blue laughs, flexes her hands. Delicate wriggle of her thumb.

_ Listen _ .


End file.
